The Trump administration has released approximately 200,000 pages of FBI surveillance records on Martin Luther King Jr, overruling objections from the slain civil rights leader's family and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organisation he led until his assassination in 1968.
The documents, which had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, were posted on a government website. The release comes amid calls from both critics and supporters of President Donald Trump for the disclosure of files from federal investigations into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump socialised for more than 15 years.
King's two living children, Martin Luther King III and Dr Bernice A King, were given advance notice and had their own teams review the records before public disclosure. In a joint statement, they appealed for the public to engage with the documents 'with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief'. They reiterated the family's long-held belief that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all, and that their father was killed as part of a conspiracy involving 'unnamed co-conspirators, including government agencies'.
The King children condemned the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign, which they said was designed to 'monitor, discredit, dismantle, and destroy Dr King's reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement'. They warned against attempts to misuse the documents to undermine their father's legacy. The King Center, founded by King's widow and now led by Bernice King, called the release 'unfortunate and ill-timed', given pressing issues facing the US and global society.
Civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton criticised the move, saying it was a 'desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files'. Trump had promised as a candidate to release files related to the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. The JFK records were unsealed in March, and some RFK files were disclosed in April. The King records were initially sealed until 2027, but Justice Department attorneys requested a federal judge lift the seal.
